


to let go (to fall)

by jkerblood



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Banter, Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Choking, Dreamsharing, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gratuitous Hand Holding, Heavy Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Instability, Not A Fix-It, Persona 5 Protagonist is from Inaba, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Underage Drinking, Unhappy Ending, Unhealthy Relationships, p5r spoiler free, that's just metaphorical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-01-03 09:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21177329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jkerblood/pseuds/jkerblood
Summary: Despite the burn, Akira wonders if it's possible to miss the sun from a watery grave.Again.





	to let go (to fall)

**Author's Note:**

> (content warning: emetophobia, slight self-harm, murder, suicide attempt(s), unhealthy relationships, choking, and overall dysfunction)

The first time is uncomplicated.

They come together with fervor and passion and rage, never acknowledging it past physical. The press of Akechi’s fingers print bruises on his skin, teeth leaving behind sensitive tracks. The attic contains their crimes of passion, like rose thorns crushed against palms which hemorrhage and congeal on petals.

“Human nature is so degrading,” Akechi whispers. Akira wasn't meant to hear it, but he has to agree with the sentiment.

Condensation runs down the window panes like tears, the cold staved off by the heat of the night. He goes into it knowing full well his true intentions, and a lie that tastes sweet direct from Akechi’s mouth.

Later, he kills him in a locked room, blood arcing across the table as Akira’s head falls. Their plan fails.

* * *

The second time is vindictive.

Akira wakes up a week before in a cold sweat, Igor’s voice still stuck in his mind. He presses a trembling hand to his head and draws it back. There’s no blood. He collapses against the mattress and out a shaky breath.

Akechi is waiting at the counter downstairs, staring him down with a bewildered look. It’s only a split second before he lunges and Akira’s world tilts, pain exploding where he comes into contact with the floor. Akechi’s arms tremble around his neck from more than exertion, and Akira can only find it pitiful, like a wild animal defending itself. He doesn’t bother fighting—just places his hands lightly on top Akechi’s and smiles, more vicious than kind.

The edges of Akira’s vision fade and there’s a single moment where everything becomes static, like the turbulent waters of his mind have stilled enough to show a perfect mirror. He really wishes Akechi wasn’t the one staring back at him.

“You hate being a leper as much as I do,” Akechi says, scathing, “You want love as much as I do.” The words sound disjointed to Akira’s rapidly dimming hearing, but the fact he cared about Akechi in the first place was damning enough. The difference was Akira didn’t go back to the same people that cast him away—Akechi might be his first shortcoming in that regard. His hands collapse Akira’s trachea.

Nothing stays but the ghost of bowed fingers against his throat and memory of Akechi’s eyes, glassy with desperation. It’s much less rattling waking after his second death.

Akira walks down to Leblanc and he’s there once more, talking to Sojiro in a moment of manufactured déjà vu. Akechi’s face speed runs the whole spectrum of emotion when Akira shows up—for the third time that day—and he rushes to the sink to retch.

Akira apologizes to Sojiro for the disruption, despite the cafe being empty. He waves it off.

“You sure you’ll be alright?” Sojiro asks him, glancing at the male hunched over the sink.

“Eventually,” he answers, and leads Akechi upstairs. He shakes with rage, screaming until his voice breaks and his words come up empty. Akira waits out his outburst, humming affable noises. Unsurprisingly, he wakes up on the same day.

* * *

The fifth time, it’s not Akira who dies first.

The Thieves’ are together studying when a customer asks Sojiro to turn up the volume on the news.

“—Detective prince, Akechi Goro, has taken his own life,” the anchor says, careful and detached. There’s an impossibly fake picture of Akechi smiling, as if his appearance on TV was just another talk show. Akira can only stare, rueful.

“Woah, what!?” Ryuji shouts next to him and the group explodes into similar exclamations. The screen switches to a neighbor’s perspective, droning on about how he was such a polite, happy boy. He can imagine the headlines already: ‘prodigal detective shocks family and friends with sudden suicide.’

He should be glad, glad his biggest enemy was dead, glad he didn’t have to spend every second wondering when he would die by Akechi’s hand next. But there’s the Akechi that occupies the moments in Akira’s mind—opening up about his mother, like a child begging for sympathy and spending all his free time at Leblanc. Maybe he’s projecting his own struggles over Akechi’s, but Akira knows what having no place in the world is like.

“What?” Akira questions, when he realizes they’re watching him.

“What should we do?” Makoto asks, glancing back at everyone else. They all wear similar confounded and expectant expressions.

He doesn’t know. Why are they asking him?

“Move on,” Akira eventually replies, and wants to laugh at how hypocritical he is. It’s terse, cold, and worst of all, definite. He’s admonishing himself more than anything.

“Yes… that would be for the best,” Haru assents. They agree to it readily, willing to bury Akechi with their remorse. He wishes he could be as accepting.

Akira ‘falls’ onto the track of an oncoming train.

* * *

The sixth time, Akira barges into Akechi’s apartment.

He texts Futaba for an address, dodging her query of why he needed it. The relief of him being alive makes his knees give out when Akechi answers, looking as pristine as the day they met. Appearances were always infallible about him—that’s how Akira knew he was real.

Akechi stares down at him with a look of weary disgust, as if he were an overly persistent cat leaving a dead bird on his doorstep. Sighing, he beckons him in and takes a seat on the couch, where he resumes the paging of his novel. Akira staggers past the threshold, shutting the door behind him and toeing off his unlaced boots.

“Why are you here?” Akechi asks, voice apathetic. Akira could spit bullshit about love, obligation, or pity and plant himself on the moral high ground that they’ve fought so hard for, but that’s disingenuine enough to hurt. He should hate Akechi—should run away as far as possible, but seeing that he suddenly can’t die, he thinks logic may not be completely faultless.

“I don’t know.” It’s too honest for both of them.

The flutter of paper stops and, for a moment, Akira thinks that Akechi might kill him for it.

“I’m not going to thank you.”

“Okay.” They don’t offer up false sympathy or bother with courtesy.

Akira busies himself with making lunch, surveying the sparse pantry. The knife rack sits innocently on the counter and catches his eye with a menacing glint.

Akechi leans back and covers his face with the book, holding it like a barrier. “I’m tired,” he admits, words muffled.

Akira shuts the fridge. “I know.”

“I am, too,” goes unsaid. Instead, he asks, “Stir-fry or omelette rice?”

They eat in silence, previous tension abandoned until Akira tells him he’s staying over. The thought of Akechi, alone and dying by his own hand twists at his thoughts.

“Do what you want,” he says, and goes back to reading. Akira takes the liberty of staying the week.

His friends flood his number, asking where he is, what he’s doing, and if he’s okay. He texts the chat that he’s fine, and to pick up Morgana from Leblanc. It’s cruel, but they won’t remember either way.

They continue through the days like any other, despite occupying the same space and the looming truth caging them in. Akira avoids talking about what had transpired and Akechi agrees through silence, acknowledging nothing and pretending that what they were wasn’t completely fucked up.

Akechi’s apartment is impersonal and overly neat, like something straight out of a furniture catalog. It contrasts so directly with the attic it’s almost stifling, so Akira brings flowers from Rafflesia and scents the air with the spice of coffee and curry. He juxtaposes his aesthetic onto Akechi’s space, blending into the atmosphere. Maybe Akira is just deluding himself, but Akechi seems a little more at ease. 

The time off is a nice break from the stress—not having to worry about juggling schedules on top of school on top of Phantom Thievery. Neither of them bother with going to school, knowing it was futile. Sitting through the same lectures every day was insufferable at best. The week is instead spent doing nothing, discussing inane topics and lazing about. Akira’s fingers run through Akechi’s hair as they get through his movie collection, head dropped against Akira’s shoulder. His glasses lay abandoned on the coffee table.

He’s careful at first, slowly wading through unfamiliar territory, but ‘accidental’ brushes escalate to become twisted intimacy without him having to try. They give each other openhanded affection and ignore the caveat that was their previous deaths. It’s too fulfilling and just as torturous.

Akira falls asleep staring at the white walls of Akechi’s bedroom and wakes up to the attic ceiling. He’s getting sick of it.

* * *

The eighth time, they go on a date.

“Let’s go,” Akira says, because he can’t stand the way Akechi is laying on the couch with an uncharacteristic stare. The sunlight shines deceptively in his eyes, but Akira knows there’s nothing to his gaze. He looks peaceful; he looks dead.

“Where?” The timbre of Akechi’s voice is dispassionate enough to make him cringe.

“Out.”

“Why?”

Akira shrugs. “To live.”

Akechi smiles mirthlessly. “Aren’t we already dead, Joker?”

He gets up anyways and lets himself get dragged through the city.

When their fingers bump on the subway Akira laces their hands together, because he is so far beyond caring, and holds tighter still when Akechi doesn’t shake him off. He turns to stare aimlessly out the window, avoiding looking at Akira altogether.

Sharing quiet words through the din of the public, they drift between shops and places. The bustle of Shibuya provides some semblance of privacy. They end up taking refuge from the winter in a dessert shop, swarmed by ignominious couples sharing sweets. It’s oppressive enough that Akira obligingly picks out a box of chocolates and brings it to the cashier.

“Akechi,” Akira calls, and it’s the only warning before he pops a candy into his mouth and slots their lips together. Cocoa melts on their tongues and he can hear indignation spread among the crowd, like they were scandalized by their existence. Akechi pushes him back gently with a sharp look and Akira shrugs in response, adjusting his glasses with a smirk fast on his lips.

“How does it taste?” He asks, biting down on another chocolate to hide his expression.

Akechi chews and swallows with a pensive look on his face. “It’s bitter,” he says, swiping his thumb across the corner of his mouth staring at it critically. The action makes all the blood rush to Akira’s face.

“Most people would say it’s sweet,” Akira says, glib.

“With you? Never.” Akechi’s words sound unamused, but the vibrancy returns ever so slightly to his demeanor and Akira flushes with pride.

(Later, he shows Akechi the picture of them kissing, caught by an intrusive fan. “It’s cute,” he says, saving the photo to his phone.

Akechi rolls his eyes. “It’s just going to disappear by the end of the week, you know.”

“Yeah,” Akira agrees, setting it as his contact photo. “But I’ll remember it.”)

* * *

The ninth time, they drink.

Akechi is the one who suggests it, much to Akira’s astonishment. They drop pretense and act with reckless abandon for a single night. Sneaking into Shido’s office, they steal his most expensive liquor and down it fast enough to ignore the burn in their throats. The rum is the same tint as Akechi’s eyes and is just as potent and dangerous.

Emboldened by alcohol, they laugh together with red cheeks and swap earnest kisses under the spotlight of streetlamps. It’s something giddy and sincere that sits like bubbles in champagne—it’s something they would never indulge in otherwise. Expectedly, they get caught and carted off to the police station.

“Not so proper now are we, Detective Prince?” Akira all but purrs into his ear, glancing at the officer facing away from the cell. Akechi’s laughter comes unrestrained, bursting through with warmth.

“What can I say,” he says amicably, looking all too like his proper persona for being so intoxicated. “I’ve come under the influence of a very hedonistic thief.”

Akechi looks a whole different kind of beautiful like this, framed through the daze of alcohol and heavy-lidded eyes. He crushes their lips together in a clumsy manner and hopes his feelings make it through.

The police call Sojiro in, who gives him a very thorough scolding and formally disowns him. Akira can only groan as his voice pierces through his skull, his other senses assaulted with similar unpleasant stimuli.

“We’re not doing this again,” Akechi says to Akira, who nods in agreement with a vague sickly look. Sojiro goes on a tangent about how he’s never going to do anything again, and Akira has passed out by then.

* * *

The tenth time, they go traveling.

Akira hauls Akechi onto the day train to Inaba, only a bag full of clothes and all the money he’s saved from the metaverse with them. The scenery shifts slowly from inner city to rural country as he describes the blandness of his hometown.

“I’m sure a city boy like you will find it interesting, though,” he says, just to be insufferable. Akira frowns when he hums in response, not acknowledging the rib.

“Trouble sleeping?” He asks, to keep up the charade they’re pulling. They both know it’s much deeper than that, but Akechi’s eyes widen anyways.

He chuckles, pulling up a light, condescending smile. “You never cease to amaze me, Kurusu-kun. Maybe your skill at deduction has surpassed my own.”

Akira sighs disdainfully. “Just Akira is fine.”

“Alright, Kurusu-kun,” he says, because Akechi is still himself no matter the state he’s in.

The train pulls into the station an hour later and Akira checks them into the Amagi inn for a room with one bed, earning a disgusted look from the hostess when he denies the request for an extra futon. He presses his lips into a sardonic smile and peers over the rim of his glasses, challenging. Akechi drags him away before they get kicked out.

That was something he enjoyed about their otherwise bleak situation—the way nothing ever stuck. Sure, he couldn’t do anything with permanence, but in the same vein, he couldn’t make any mistakes either.

_ Like letting Akechi die, _ his mind supplies unnecessarily. His grip tightens, as if he could supplement the weak hold of life with his own. Akechi squeezes back, but says nothing.

It’s night by the time they make it to the beach, parking a rental car in the vacated lot.

(Akechi was shocked to learn he had a license. “With how you drive in the metaverse…”

“Mmm. Makoto made me get one after she joined the team,” Akira responded, and left it there. The team was a sore spot, or rather, one more object on the long list of things they refused to acknowledge.)

The sand is cold against his bare feet, the water even more so. The area is completely empty, silent except for the far off rumble of a car toiling along the road and the lap of water against the coast.

“Why the beach, Kurusu? It’s the middle of November,” Akechi calls from the shore, watching him fall back to the ocean with a resounding splash. Akira shuts his eyes and lets the tide overtake him.

“Come join me,” he says, through chattering teeth.

“Are you crazy?”

The water swirls around, making way for another person. Akechi looms above him, backlit by the sparse light of the moon. He looks so ethereal and impermanent that Akira wants to grab on and never let go. So he does.

“Definitely,” Akira answers and tugs him closer. Akechi hisses as he hits the water, arms posting next to his head to prevent him from falling on Akira completely. He hooks his wrists around Akechi’s neck and reaches up to kiss him, seawater cascading off in a cold shower.

“You didn’t have to drag me down as well,” Akechi tells him when they break away, lying side by side.

“I wanted to. The stars are brighter here, don’t you think?”

The sky settles over them in hazy hues, blurred by the liquid on his glasses. He searches for Akechi’s hand, snaking under his glove and tossing it into the sand behind them. The tips of his fingers are mangled and rapidly getting frostbite—his nails are cut halfway to their beds.

“They don’t grow long enough for me to need to clip them anymore,” Akechi says, gaze decisively pointed upwards. “But I do anyways.”

The sea is icy around them, aching down to his bones. He thinks he could melt away like this.

“We’re both insane, then,” Akira says, words spilling out like an oil slick. It’s supposed to be teasing, but it loses spark as it falls and ends up morose. Akira holds on gently and they decay in the waves, lavishing under the light glow of space.

They get their dues in the form of pneumonia and stay wrapped under covers for the rest of the week.

* * *

The twelfth time, they dream.

Akechi sits in the middle of the room, seated at an opulent table. Maybe it’s just Akira’s focus, but the colors feel bland and sterile, like the world is transitioning to grayscale. Even the shine of gold and silver in Akechi’s costume seems matted—it makes the red of his gloves and the overly carmine meat seem all the more demanding.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Akira asks, watching Akechi take a prim bite. It smells repugnantly metallic and raw.

He doesn’t look up, complete focus directed onto his task. “I haven’t tasted anything in quite some time.” Crimson drips down his chin, dirtying the cloth napkin as he dabs it away.

“That’s not what I asked.” But Akira already knows the answer, because he has always known with Akechi. There’s gore blooming against his jacket, seeping through where his heart is supposed to be. It beats sluggishly on the plate as he dissects it.

Akira swirls the liquid in his wine glass—it’s congealed into a solid. Akechi has been here for a while.

Akira wakes up, and the red of Akechi’s lips have never looked so bloody before.

* * *

The thirteenth time is when Akechi finally brings it up.

“We need to end this,” he says suddenly, scrubbing at the leftover plates in the sink. Before Akira can get a word in, he continues.

“I understand you want to fulfill your hero complex, Akira-kun, but I am ready to die.” It’s abrupt and unforgiving, but the worst part is that Akira knows it’s true. Knows his own selfishness was the only thing keeping them stuck, knows Akechi has been willing to end it since the beginning, knows he’s only torturing them both.

Despite that, Akira says, “One more week,” because Akechi called him by his first name and he wouldn’t be able to stand it otherwise.

Akechi sighs and inspects his fingers idly, but acquiesces nevertheless. “In a week, I’ll die,” he agrees, with the detachment of a cadaver.

He’s barely there anymore, not the person Akira once knew. A fabled-nightingale stuck in a cage, perhaps—he has to let him free. Akechi is evidence of Akira’s sins as a human that burns truth through his heart, because he knows he’ll never return to breathe life back into him.

But they’re tired. It creeps to the shadows of Akechi’s face and deepens the torment in Akira’s mind, wrung out like a threadbare dishrag. While he can’t bear to let go, he doesn’t know if he’ll last another second with Akechi.

Akira clutches at him with the desperation of death and spends the week marking his existence into Akechi’s memories. It’s pathetic and vain, he knows, but he’ll be the only one who remembers in the end. Mercifully, Akechi reciprocates. Akira doesn’t know if it’s just perfunctory—or maybe something else altogether—but he takes what he is given.

The concluding night is dark and dire, and Akira thinks he finally learns the true meaning of grief. If this was how Akechi had felt when he saw Akira that day in Leblanc, he could understand why he had seemed so vacant afterward.

They lay together during the night and end up in different places when dawn comes.

* * *

The fourteenth time, they don’t look each other in the eyes anymore.

It’s revolting how effortless it is for Akira to fall back into routine, fixing himself back into place among his friends. What’s worse is how much relief he feels when he doesn’t have to watch Akechi's gradual decline.

His life proceeds normally and the weeks they spent together exist only in the confines of his thoughts. He doesn’t speak to Akechi when they call meetings, keeps him on the reserve team, and only brings him if they were on the verge of death. The others think it’s because Akira hates him. He might, but for all the wrong reasons.

They clear Sae’s palace with ease. He gets thrown into the interrogation room once again, meets Akechi once again. The only differences are the empty guard post and that there’s less of them now, whittled down until there’s only faintly beating hearts (and less still). His tears are cold and saline and bitter on Akira’s tongue, like ocean water and chocolate. Akechi is careful of his wounds when they kiss, but Akira’s skin still aches under his fingers.

“I won’t forget you,” Akira promises, as a goodbye, because it’s all he can give without destroying himself completely. The words carve irrefutable scars into his mind, like the lead of a bullet has soaked into his grey matter.

Their previous convictions are long abandoned when they leave, emptier than ever. As Akira watches Akechi’s back shrink down the hall, he almost calls out, fingers splayed out in front of him.

He suddenly realizes he has never told Akechi he loved him, or even that he was sorry, but by then it’s too late. It wouldn’t be able to capture his feelings either way.

_ Let go, _ he tells himself. Akechi slips out of his grasp and Akira free falls to the Earth.

* * *

There are no second chances anymore.

Akechi dies on Shido’s ship.

**Author's Note:**

> omitted scene:
> 
> (“I had an awful dream last night,” Akechi says, yawning. “You were in it.”
> 
> “Yeah? What happened?”
> 
> “I just told you--you were in it.”)
> 
> [my tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jkerblood) where you can chat about this fic with me


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